I competed at Fright Fest and oh man was that an experience. Ok guys, it was straight up blizzarding outside the whole day. The drive up to Fort Collins wasn't terrible (mostly because my husband drove) but the way back home was treacherous with whiteout conditions most of the way. Regardless of the frightful weather, a good time was had by all. Here is my recap:
Practice Ice - I signed up for a 15 minute practice session a few hours before I competed so I could get my legs under me. Unfortunately, my legs were nowhere near under me. I was skating well until I started warming up my flip jumps. I fell on almost every.single.one. Coach Katie was there to talk me through it and thankfully she had spoken to Christopher because at one point she said "what are the two things Christopher told you to remember about the flip jump?" In my anxious panic, I forgot to pick in far behind and draw in and I forgot to keep my chest up. Remembering those things, my flip improved slightly. I'm really thankful that although Christopher couldn't be there, Katie was a lovely substitute. She kept me calm and she coached me well. She was great! I did some lovely camels and scratch spins to finish out the time I had left and before I knew it, my fifteen minutes were up.
Waiting - There was about a two hour wait until my actual competition event so hubby and I waited in the cold, cold, car and played Uno until it was time to go back in. If it weren't for Covid, I would have happily watched the skaters competing in the events before mine. Alas, car time it was.
Stations- There were a few stations set up for us to keep our group separate from the other competitors so when we entered the arena, we went to station #1 off ice warm up. I did some dynamic stretching and talked with the other ladies I was competing with before we were ushered in to station #2 locker room skates on. Six of us were crammed in a tiny locker room to put our skates on before getting on the ice for our on-ice warm up. During my short warm up I did some nice camel spins and felt pretty confident that I would get a nice camel when it mattered most. Everything felt great. I was ready to go!
Competition Time! - I was the second skater out of our group so I was still pretty fresh from the warm up. As the first skater was competing, I had some time to talk to Coach Katie. She gave me a nice pep talk and reminded me of my strengths. I think the biggest boost to my self-esteem was when she told me that I "look like an actual figure skater." I thanked her and before I went on I told myself that "this is for Daisy." I don't think I admitted this here yet but I'm skating this program in memory of a very special kitty I loved and lost. We lost her 4 years ago but I think about her all the time. She was sick and we did all we could to fix her but eventually we had to let her go. I took my starting position and then the music started. Everything went really well. The flip jump landed but I had a bit of trouble on the camel. I got about two revs in before I got a little pitched forward and lost it. The only thing I could do to recover it was to do a change foot into a backspin (which only got two revs because I lost some momentum). Although it was a huge mistake to me, I think the judges thought it was supposed to be a camel-backspin so it might have worked in my favor. My final scratch spin was perfectly centered with arms overhead and had about 9 revs. I wanted to prove to them that I can spin. I ended up getting first place (WOOT!). I feel like there was one other lady who skated better than me but her ordinals didn't reflect that for some reason. Out of five judges, I had 3 first place ordinals. I did better than I thought. My gold medal is pretty! It's Halloween themed and the medal part is a glittery pumpkin! All of us skated so well!
Here is the video. Please excuse the quality. There were no professional videographers so we had to make do:
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